Furniture, exhibition structures and the like are to an increasingly great extent no longer delivered in a ready-to-use, assembled state, but rather as a set of individual parts which are assembled upon delivery by agents of the supplier or the purchaser, or by the purchaser if he is picking it up himself.
A consequence of this development has been the creation of modular systems from which the furniture, exhibition structures or even more of the like, e.g. room structures, can be assembled. One such modular system for furniture, exhibition structures or the like generally consists of a series of standardized furniture or exhibition stand components, e.g. wall, ceiling, and/or floor modules which in this written description are summarized under the concept of “wall modules,” and connecting elements with which the standardized parts are connectable with one another.
By combining the components and/or varying the structure itself, the item of furniture or exhibition structure assembled from the modular system can be adjusted simply and flexibly to the space in which it is to be installed, but also to the customer's desires and ideas. Besides this obvious advantage for the customer, such modular systems nevertheless also provide substantial advantages for the manufacturer, since a broader assortment of completely different items of furniture and exhibition structures can be offered on the basis of a few individual structural components, each of which can then be conveniently manufactured in high volumes.
Such modular systems for furniture, exhibition structures or the like are known, for example, from WO 2005/087048 A1, DE 102007043561 A1 and DE 102007043564 A1.
What is problematical with the modular systems for furniture, exhibition structures or the like known from these publications, however, is the fact that essentially plate-shaped sections of the
connecting elements are, at least in sections, received in grooves which are provided in the wall modules, wherein the grooves in the wall module run from its front surface which, in assembled furniture faces the observer, to the back surface which is situated opposite to said front surface, and lie between surface areas of the wall surfaces of the wall module, that is, of those surfaces which in the assembled item of furniture define a boundary of the same within its interior space or to the exterior space.
This groove geometry tends toward breaking out when it is subjected to a heavy load, which is particularly the case when a wall module is lifted with its connecting elements inserted, which for example is often the case when assembling an item of furniture or exhibition stand in order to make a connection with an additional wall module on the side of the wall module lying opposite to the already-inserted connector.